The goal of this ancillary proposal to the Johnston County Osteoarthritis (JoCo OA) Project: Arthritis and Disability (1U01DP003206-01 - funded by the CDC) is to create a repository of enhanced vital status, date and cause of death for participants during their current follow-up and to examine the contribution of knee and/or hip OA to mortality in non-Hispanic African-American (AA) and Caucasian men and women. The parent study was designed to encompass multiple aspects of the OA process from the biomedical to the psychosocial and from the pre-clinical to disability. Examining mortality in this cohort with u to 25 years of observation and extensive OA and chronic conditions data over multiple time points provides the perfect opportunity to answer these questions in ways other studies could not, and additionally, enhance the parent project. The goal will be accomplished with these 3 specific aims and a 4th exploratory aim: 1) to create a repository of enhanced vital status data in the 20+ year follow-up of the JoCo OA with the date and cause of death; 2) to determine whether knee and/or hip OA at baseline is associated with excess all-cause or disease-specific mortality, independent of concomitant comorbidities and obesity, and whether it is modified separately by gender, by race, and by socioeconomic status; 3) to evaluate the combined impact of OA and obesity, diabetes mellitus or cardiovascular disease on all-cause and disease specific mortality; and 4) to explore whether OA severity and persistence of symptoms of OA impacts all-cause and disease-specific mortality.